For Harper, the Senate remains the mortal threat

Stephen Harper still seems to think of the Senate of Canada as his court eunuch. It may yet turn out to be his Waterloo.

Is there a single file this prime minister has bungled more sensationally — or a group he has treated with greater contempt?

First, there was the promise of no new Senate appointments. The torrent of his subsequent patronage appointments moved fast enough to generate electricity. By way of alibis, Harper claimed it was all about “reforming” the Senate — something he claimed he could do unilaterally.

Then the Supreme Court ruling demonstrated his wobbly grasp of constitutional law. Turns out there’s no such thing as unilateral reform under the Constitution. Harper didn’t know what he was talking about.

In fact, the Senate has a legitimate and constitutional role, one independent of “the other place”. As Hugh Segal put it in his farewell address to his Senate colleagues, the Red Chamber is an independent institution designed to pursue “better laws and a better country”.

That’s what Segal and sixteen of his Conservative colleagues were doing when they amended into oblivion a private member’s bill aimed at putting the screws to unions. If passed, unions would have had to account for all expenditures over $5,000 and every salary over $100,000. In amending it, the dissident Tory senators — led by Segal — saw the original piece of legislation as unnecessary, unjustified, intrusive and unconstitutional. Conservative MP Russ Hiebert had penned a clunker. In Toews-speak, either you were with him or with the Marxographers. It was, of course, a crock.

For one thing, C-377 — which the Conservatives now intend to shove through the Senate at ramming speed — encroaches on provincial jurisdiction over labour. For another, it’s hard to see how it doesn’t violate the Charter of Rights, considering that unions are 100 per cent funded by their own members. Unions aren’t like the federal institutions that Harper claimed to be making more transparent under the Accountability Act. But to Conservatives, they’re the enemy.

John Gordon, former president of the Public Service Alliance of Canada, told me Harper always conducts a war of attrition on the big issues — even when the facts are against him. “I think Harper and his followers understand we will probably be successful in the Supreme Court in challenging these things,” he said, “but ten years down the road …

“Here’s the bottom line: Under Harper, there are no labour relations in the federal public service. He is more than aloof — he is dishonest, quite frankly. He refers everything to the Industrial Labor Relations Board and then uses the time to prepare the back-to-work legislation. He doesn’t ever deal in details, just platitudes.”

Bill 377 is not a private member’s bill at all; Hiebert’s just a PMO hand-puppet, allowing Harper to make war on unions without making it an official matter of party policy. The poorly-drafted bill’s greatest supporter was the PMO itself.

The government simply wants to make running a union more expensive. Again, it’s worth noting that, since unions already provide audited financial statements to every local in the country, financial accountability can hardly be the government’s goal — especially since it practices minimal compliance in its own fiscal management.

Remember the history here. Rather than deal face-on with Segal’s changes to the legislation, Stephen Harper prorogued Parliament. Then he bided his time, circled around and went straight back to Plan A. This is a one-trick raptor.

So the same, unamended bill will be reintroduced into a Senate that now has no Hugh Segal sitting in it. But Harper the tactician has added a wrinkle.

One of the sustaining beliefs of Harper’s base is that Conservatives are somehow an ethical cut above Liberals. What the long, drawn-out process of seeking justice in Duffygate will show is that Stephen Harper’s personal office operation was as tawdry as anything undertaken by a Grit on an entitlement bender.

Alongside this rejected and faulty piece of legislation, the prime minister has introduced a time allocation on the Senate debate — the first instance where time allocation has been used on anything but government business.

Although the change came about through a Conservative-controlled committee, Harper’s fingerprints are all over this latest move to undermine the Senate’s independence. He ignored the Senate’s previous amendments because they defied his political agenda. Nor was he about to let rabble-rousers in the Red Chamber pour water into the vinegar of C-377. How do you tell your hardcore supporters to cough up five dollars for the cause if you start pulling your punches against organized labour?

Harper’s towering arrogance towards the Senate was front and centre throughout the Wright/Duffy affair. Everyone concentrated on the $90,000 gift from Nigel Wright, then the PM’s chief of staff, to Senator Mike Duffy. Less noted by the public was the PMO’s egregious abuse of the Senate.

Remember, agents of the PMO actively interfered in a forensic audit ordered by the Senate, directed Conservative Senator David Gerstein to gain advance information about the contents of that audit from friends at Deloitte, and then manipulated a Senate report into this potentially criminal matter until staffers were satisfied the PMO’s interests were served. The RCMP gave the Harper PMO an easy ride in the Wright/Duffy Affair; Duffy, by comparison, has been treated like Kim Philby.

As for dropping the investigation into Nigel Wright, the commissioner of the RCMP hasn’t exactly covered himself in glory explaining exactly why that decision was taken. He’s been behaving like any other Harper deputy minister — failing in his duty to inform the public of vital public business. And forget the mumbo jumbo about respecting the court process; the Mounties held multiple press conferences to air Duffy’s alleged dirty laundry.

One significant danger to the Harper government is what the auditor general will report next March on how senators have interpreted Senate rules on matters like housing expenses. What does the PM say if Michael Ferguson finds that the problem does not lie with individual senators like Mike Duffy but with the Senate rules themselves?

It has long been forgotten by most people that Nigel Wright himself — and to a degree, the prime minister — acknowledged the possibility that Duffy might have been be justified in claiming the expenses he claimed under Senate rules. (According to Duffy, Harper said that the base would never understand the rules, which was why he had to repay the expenses.) It is true those rules changed, but can you change rules and apply them retroactively?

The PMO also engineered the suspension of senators without a hearing and refused Duffy a meeting with auditors when he finally asked for one. Just as Nixon used the IRS against his enemies, Harper used all the powers of government against an asset that had turned into a liability.

But Duffy’s trial itself poses the greatest threat of all to Stephen Harper. True, Harper is not up on criminal charges; Duffy’s the one facing jail time and the demolition of what remains of his reputation.

The carpet bombing of that reputation — month after month, often led by the PMO — may have convinced Duffy to leave it to a judge alone, rather than a jury, to decide his fate. (Where were you going to find twelve jurors who hadn’t already decided that Duffy was caught in the hen house with a chicken under each arm and feathers on his lips?)

The facts as revealed at trial may exonerate Duffy — or they may send him to jail. But Harper doesn’t have to be dragged to the stand as a witness to suffer serious damage. One of the sustaining beliefs of Harper’s base is that Conservatives are somehow an ethical cut above Liberals. The Grits, so the neo-con mantra goes, are quintessentially sleazy.

What the long, drawn-out process of seeking justice in Duffygate will show is that Stephen Harper’s personal office operation was as tawdry as anything undertaken by a Grit on an entitlement bender. That won’t matter much to Liberals or New Democrats because they don’t vote for Harper anyway. But it will bother the Tory base.

It is ironic that the very people Harper tried to please by making a big issue out of Duffy’s expenses will be horrified when they see exactly what went down in the Wright/Duffy Affair — the deception, the use of party money for Duffy’s legal bill, and the conniving designed to keep the whole thing a dirty little secret.

A March election is about the only thing that could help Stephen Harper avoid finding out if April really is the cruelest month.

Michael Harris is a writer, journalist, and documentary filmmaker. He was awarded a Doctor of Laws for his “unceasing pursuit of justice for the less fortunate among us.” His eight books include Justice Denied, Unholy Orders, Rare ambition, Lament for an Ocean, and Con Game. His work has sparked four commissions of inquiry, and three of his books have been made into movies. He recently completed a book about the Harper majority government to be published soon by Penguin Canada.

The views, opinions and positions expressed by all iPolitics columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of iPolitics.

I for one would welcome an early election. The sooner Harper is defeated and resigns, the better off Canadians will be. He has done so much damage to our international reputation and shown absolute contempt for our Parliament and Institutions, even one more year of a Harper govt is too much..

It may have been by accident, it may have been by design; one may agree or one may disagree – but I think it should now be admitted that the Senate has been effectively neutered.
Personally I think it undesirable, as there should always be a check and balance on the self-serving politicians.
Personally I would like to see a ‘triple E’ Senate, and as an adjunct I would like to see someone use the Notwithstanding Clause five or six times in the hope that the idiot Charter would then be effectively neutered (once the psychological barrier to using the Notwithstanding Clause is broken by precedent than I think the Charter will become essentially meaningless, as it should).
We would then have a Commons with a Senate as a check and balance; a titular Charter accompanied, I suspect, by a Supreme Court which would not usurp as many of Parliament’s functions as it has come to do in recent years.

I like Trudeau’s Senate solution better and would prefer all Senators sat as independents.
(Electing them would add another layer of politics and gobble up taxes thanks to our generous tax deductions.)

And elections would make us just like Americans with another layer of bipartisan politics. And deeper control by the moneyed class. I believe that independent Canadians can add important ideas to the mix and debate them better without party lines. That second sober thought that our forefathers envisonned. There are other good ways to select independent senators than expensive partisan elections.

I would agree if I thought that all, or at least a majority, of Senators would really be largely independent – or maybe I should say independent enough? As for Trudeau’s idea – I don’t really believe for a minute that the former Liberal Senators are anything but Liberal Senators.

Fair enough. You maybe right but I have to say I know any number of people who are apolitical, including university profs, business owners, former public servants( especially!); thoughtful experienced people who could be nominated by a non affiliated system. And hey I have even seen party members work cooperatively for the greater good under the right circumstances. Once upon a time even our senate did. But those days are gone now that we have militant parties.

not just one person. Have to have a committee, maybe vetting and iterations. representatives of different interests: national, regional, age, gender, affiliation, whatever needs to be represented. Expensive but then it is anyway and elections would cost more.

Calandra is doing the PM’s sleaze, while Steve is in NYC stating that we are the cleanest energy stewards in the world, while snubbing the Conferences and the meetings and then shows up to parade a speech of platitudes that a high school graduate could prepare better. The place seemed to boycott his appearance as it was two thirds empty! No doubt about it, the Harper wheels have inevitably wobbled and fell off. He seems more loved on the jet set circuit than doing the rounds at Tim’s. The most anti-democratic and antagonistic PM in the history of Canada is on the way out. But how many lives has the ideologue ruined and how long will it take to regain the repect we had in the world. Keep up the great standard of work Michael. Bring on the book.